Lawsuit against Lake County prosecutor advances

Jerry Hobbs is interviewed by Tribune reporter Dan Hinkel at Kathleen Zellner's law office in Downers Grove on Tuesday, June 21, 2011. Hobbs was originally charged with 1st degree murder of his daughter Laura Hobbs and her friend, Krystal Tobias. DNA found at the crime scene tie the DNA to another man already in jail for attempted murder. (Stacey Wescott)

Successful lawsuits against prosecutors are rare, but an exonerated former murder suspect has cleared an early obstacle in his attempt to hold Lake County prosecutors legally liable for his ordeal.

Jerry Hobbs spent five years in jail awaiting trial after he confessed to killing his 8-year-old daughter and her 9-year-old friend in Zion in 2005. Though DNA indicated his innocence in 2007, prosecutors continued to press charges until the evidence led authorities to another man in 2010 and Hobbs was freed.

Ruling recently on a motion to throw out Hobbs' lawsuit against police and prosecutors, U.S. Circuit Judge Joan Lefkow declined to dismiss Hobbs' claims that prosecutors violated his rights by aiding police in coercing a confession and then using his words as evidence against him.

Lefkow noted that prosecutors enjoy broad immunity from civil suits related to acts undertaken while preparing or trying a case. But she decided Lake County State's Attorney Michael Waller and his top deputies did not have immunity because Hobbs' suit claims that they took an active role in helping officers interrogate him, allegedly coaching them on how to persuade him to confess on camera.

Experts said Hobbs' lawsuit slips through a gap in immunity created when prosecutors take investigative roles traditionally reserved for police, who are more legally vulnerable.While prosecutors might perceive benefits in supervising officers as they try to build sound cases, experts said doing so also creates opportunities for people who are exonerated to sue.

"(Suing a prosecutor) is a daunting task … but it can be done," said Peter Neufeld, co-founder and co-director of the New York-based Innocence Project, a group that works to free inmates it believes are innocent.

James Sotos, a lawyer for the prosecution, said the motion to dismiss is only an early step in the case. He noted that Lefkow didn't judge the evidence related to Hobbs' claims but only allowed the suit to move on. Sotos has said prosecutors acted in good faith in the case.

"The ruling does not suggest that the court is crediting Hobbs' case, only that the case moves to the next phase, at which (point) each side will have the chance to present their evidence," he said.

Lefkow's ruling was not a complete victory for Hobbs, as she threw out parts of the lawsuit on the basis of statutes of limitations and other portions because they didn't contain legally valid claims.

Waller, who will retire next month after a little more than two decades in office, could not be reached for comment.

The incoming state's attorney, fellow Republican Mike Nerheim, has vowed to reform an office that has suffered a streak of legal losses in prosecutions contradicted by DNA evidence. In Hobbs' case and three others, Waller and his deputies continued to insist on the suspect's guilt after blood or semen evidence indicated his innocence.

Each time, prosecutors floated a theory as to how the evidence arrived at the scene incidentally. All four cases collapsed, but only after the original suspects had spent a total of 60 years in jail.

Another of the former inmates cleared by DNA, Juan Rivera, also sued Waller in late October. Rivera was released from prison in January after serving 20 years of a life sentence for allegedly killing 11-year-old Holly Staker in Waukegan in 1992.

Hobbs' trouble started shortly after he found the bodies of his daughter, Laura, and her friend Krystal Tobias in a Zion park in May 2005.

Suspicious of Hobbs' discovery of the bodies and his extensive criminal record, officers held him for roughly 24 hours and accused him repeatedly of stabbing the girls. In his confession, Hobbs said he beat Laura when she defied his orders to come home, and, when Tobias rushed him with a knife, he disarmed her and killed them both.

In 2007, defense lawyers learned of semen evidence in Laura Hobbs' body that didn't match her father. Prosecutors argued that the evidence wasn't relevant because she played in a spot where couples went to have sex.

That theory took a hit in 2010, when the evidence was linked in a national DNA database to Jorge Torrez, who had been charged with a series of attacks on women in the Washington, D.C., area, including an abduction and rape. Torrez, 16 at the time of the slayings, lived near the girls in Zion and was a close friend of Tobias' half-brother before joining the Marines after high school.

Torrez was charged in May in Lake County with the Zion slayings.

He is now serving five life sentences for the Washington attacks, and also faces trial in the 2009 slaying of 20-year-old Navy Petty Officer Amanda Snell, who lived on the same military base that he did. Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in that case.